By Zoe Taylor – Pioneer Reporter

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The Office of Student Life at Oklahoma City Community College recently implemented a new platform, “Presence.” Presence allows students to connect to their peers through engaging activities and staying active in the campus community.

Student Life started utilizing Presence during the fall 2021 semester, providing students with all campus activities and events at their fingertips.

Cody Garrison, the director of student life, stated, “It is an online platform that helps campuses identify ways to increase student engagement, better allocate resources, enhance assessment practices, and promote opportunities, ultimately improving outcomes and retention.”

According to the Presence website, the platform’s founders were students involved in campus activities and organizations that know an all-in-one platform can provide a richer college experience.

Within Presence, students can view clubs, organizations, events, and other opportunities to become more involved in the campus community. Garrison stated the idea for the platform came from the many changes that arose with Covid-19.

“As we continue to navigate in a post COVID era and as we have more students online, Presence allows students to learn what is happening on campus and get involved,” said Garrison.

Students utilizing Presence to interact with student life gain benefits as well. 

“Students who attend events and join clubs will receive co-curricular scholarship points. These points will then be applied for opportunities to receive scholarships,” Garrison stated.

Students can log on to the Presence platform by going online at occc.presence.io and using their school portal email and password.

Garrison stated that Presence has many features that Student Life is excited to implement, one of them being an on-demand feature that allows students to participate in events on their own time.

Presence is also helping Student Life measure student engagement in their events.

Said Garrison, “It has been harder to gauge this in the past, but with Presence, Student Life can better assess how many students are engaging with us. At this point, we have had a total of 1,078 students attend 64 events.”

Student Life will be utilizing the information from this new platform to improve campus experiences to cater to what OCCC students would like to see.

“As we receive more demographic information on attendance, we can shift how we market and engage students to encourage more participation,” Garrison stated.

Presence not only helps OCCC students who want to attend events, it also gives student leaders in clubs and organizations a digital place to perform administrative duties. This helps provide the organization more time to focus on events and activities for students.

“Presence also allows for more streamlined processes administratively. Student Life can also see who is involved in what clubs. We now have access to review trends in engagement to better inform programming and best practices,” Garrison said.

Garrison recognizes that Presence is a new platform, so the Student Life staff is making time to help students learn more about it. 

Said Garrison, “If students need help logging in, or if they would just rather chat with a staff member, they are always welcome to stop by the Office of Student Life to inquire about getting involved.”
The Office of Student Life is located in the Main Building on the OCCC Campus at office 1J2 by the Bursar’s office and Student Accessibility and Support.